A Refresher Course in bIQ and bEQ

When we first launched RTI, I had introduced the concept of bIQ and bEQ as a measure of your bike handling skills (bIQ) and your peloton people skills (bEQ) over the weeks as we have asked people to comment on their bIQ and bEQ levels, a number of people have expressed bewilderment at these terms. Rather than take this as a hint that NOBODY READS A GOD DAMN WORD I WRITE (Oops! I thought I only said that in my head!) I decided to republish the original description of bIQ and bEQ but with the promise that we will find examples for you as the weeks go by. Now no more Under The Helmets where people say what are bIQ and bEQ please.

So what of bIQ and bEQ?

So, if you are like me, when you’re slogging your guts out for 4 to 5 hours on a Saturday, sometimes your mind strays into the abstract. For the last couple of months the idea of bIQ and bEQ has been running around my head as I stare at the wheel in front muttering the mantra “HTFU, HTFU” to myself.

I’m sure you are all familiar with the concept of IQ or Intelligence Quotient as a measure of you intellectual potential, and many of you will be familiar with the extension of that called EQ or Emotional Quotient as a measure for your ability to understand peoples emotional state. Well, while on a ride with a number of individuals (you know who you are, or maybe you don’t and that’s the point), I started pondering whether there was a peloton equivalent of EQ, and in particular were those people who get to the front, put their heads down and bury themselves without any sympathy for their tired compatriots demonstrating zero EQ.

When I realised that these were in fact normal caring husbands and fathers who surely had EQ, It struck me that we were in a parallel peloton universe where we needed a new measure and hence biking IQ (bIQ) and biking EQ (bEQ) were born.

bIQ is a measure of your bike handling skills, race craft, and sheer ability to be in the right place on 2 wheels at the right time. bEQ on the other hand is your ability to empathise with the peloton, to know when members are suffering and to control the pace accordingly to get everybody home in one piece.

It has become my mission to root out examples of zero bEQ and expose them and to reward those who demonstrate empathy with their peloton brothers and sisters. At the same time to highlight examples of truly great bIQ that we all may learn and to expose and ridicule examples of poor bIQ just for the fun of it! Email me your examples.